User experience (UX) design can be viewed as the “human” side of the technology. It’s an ideal career path for anyone who wants to be involved in tech, but not as a programmer or engineer. UX designers and researchers have a great responsibility: they’re tasked with leveraging each customer interaction using measured research and tactical design. This practice leads to optimal “user experiences” with products and services and translates directly to the success of the company. Watch our video about UX Design.

Why Start a Career in UX Design?

Simply put, UX designers are in high demand. From tech giants to startups, businesses of all kinds and sizes need competent UX designers to craft exceptional user experiences for their customers in order to be successful.

According to the Robert Half recruiting agency’s Creative Group, user experience design is one of the most in-demand creative industry jobs right now.

CNN Money includes UX Designers and Researchers as two of its “Best Jobs in America” in 2017 because of the average 16% growth rate and $95,950 median salary.

This bootcamp prepares you for a job as a junior-level UX designer where starting salaries in our area typically range between $45,000 and $70,000 per year depending upon your background, skill level and the size of the company. Of course, your salary and responsibilities can grow significantly as you gain skills and work experience.

Who Should Take This Program?

UX design is a modern career fit for professionals who come from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds such as graphic design, coding, product design, psychology or many others. For example, if you’re an experienced graphic designer trying to keep pace in the job market, adding UX design expertise makes you extremely attractive to employers — you’ll be able to leverage your design/aesthetic experience in your UX design projects. Some key attributes of a great UX designer are empathy, curiosity, problem solving, and being able to communicate complicated concepts clearly to others.

How Our Program is Unique

CodeCraft School’s UX Design Bootcamp was designed by three UX design experts working for innovative companies like Google, who create products used by hundreds of millions of users. As a result our unique curriculum is rich with insights, best practices and real-world tools and techniques that you won’t find anywhere else.

In addition both our career services team and industry mentors (who hire UX designers themselves) understand what hiring managers are looking for and their feedback is continually integrated into the curriculum.

You’ll graduate from this part-time, 20-week program ready to be hired into a junior UX designer role. The program is designed to expose you to the entire UX design process while working on a real-world project for a real client. Along the way, you’ll also learn graphic design fundamentals, important software tools including Sketch, InVision, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and even some front-end web development skills so that you graduate with a diverse skill set and professional portfolio that will stand out in the job market.

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Rooted in the Real World

The course itself is structured to set you up for success through experience-based learning. Throughout the program you’ll be guided by our lead instructor while also gaining valuable insights and project feedback from our expert mentors. During the bootcamp you’ll be working on a real-world UX problem for a local non-profit and will graduate with a portfolio that demonstrates a real-world solution.

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Personalized Learning

CodeCraft School has a well-deserved reputation for our dedication to the success of our students and our smaller class sizes. You’ll experience this personalized learning environment yourself with both our lead instructor and our expert mentors who will guide you through the curriculum while providing valuable professional insights. This team will be available throughout your bootcamp to answer questions, provide feedback on your projects and to help you prepare for getting a job after you graduate.

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Part-Time Schedule

We’ve scheduled this program to be as accessible as possible while truly preparing graduates for careers in UX design. Classes are held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 6pm to 9pm and from 9am to 5pm every other Saturday for 20 weeks. This allows you to continue to earn an income by day while accelerating your career at night. It’s a balanced schedule so you don’t have to put the brakes on your current commitments.

Learn From World-Class Experts

Lead Instructor, Michelle Coutinho

Prior to joining CodeCraft, Michelle taught at Full Sail University leading courses on Usability, (UX) User Experience, and (IxD) Interaction Design. Drawing from 12 years of experience as a User Interface Designer she mentored students who were having difficulty presenting their work, understanding design principles, software, or who were falling behind because they were not able to break down their projects and assignments. Michelle has an extensive design background, an intuitive sense of aesthetics and is skilled at effective communication and visual storytelling. Students love Michelle’s passion for teaching and sharing her knowledge and experience.

Mentor, Nikki Pfarr

Nikki has been a leader in the UX design space for the last decade. After absorbing cutting edge practices in her education at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, she has brought a sharp behavioral economics lens to her career, which includes innovative work for the likes of Google and Microsoft.

Mentor, Chris Alvarez

Chris has a unique perspective on UX Design that he’s gained from his diverse career that spans from experiences for CPS Energy to being a Lead UX Designer for a startup. Locally, he also leads a UI/UX Design Meetup and loves the design process.

Mentor, Jason Walzer

Jason is a UX design leader who enjoys strategy, product & service innovation, interaction design and communication design. His has worked with start-ups and multinationals and is currently leading a multidisciplinary team at Google to design meaningful products and services for home, work, or on the go.

What Is UX Design and Why Does It Matter?

Why Learn UX Design at CodeCraft?

Career Placement

While we teach you everything you’ll want to know about job hunting, we also know that each student’s goals are different. We tailor our approach when we’re helping build your portfolio, updating your résumé, connecting you in our employer network, and suggesting networking events.

Meredith Rafter

Director of Career Services

“My goal when working with students is to guide them through the process of finding their next great job. I’m responsible for developing student’s job search skills and networking skills through classroom presentations, workshops, one-on-one coaching sessions, mock interviews, and encouraging participation in career development courses.”

Why Choose CodeCraft?

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Free BDA Classes

The most desirable UX designers are well-rounded with complementary skills such as web development, graphic design and software skills. While you’ll learn much of this during the bootcamp, we encourage you to personalize and deepen your learning with FREE classes at Boulder Digital Arts before, during, and up to three months after graduating from our bootcamps. BDA offers hundreds of classes every year in topics ranging from typography to digital marketing.

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Housing Available in Boulder

Boulder has one of the most vibrant tech scenes in the country. In fact, we have a higher density of start ups than Silicon Valley, which means it’s a great place to start a tech career, but makes for an expensive housing market. Luckily, we’ve arranged for affordable housing for enrolled students so that you can take advantage of our unique UX design bootcamp no matter where you’re from!

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Affordable Tuition

We strive to make our bootcamps affordable. The tuition for our UX design bootcamp is only $8,900 which includes 24×7 access to our campus, full career services, and free BDA workshops. If you need financial assistance, CodeCraft is an eligible source of training with Workforce Colorado and we work with a variety of trusted, third-party lenders. Learn more.

Tuition, Schedule & Start Dates

Tuition

Schedule

This program is a total of 20 weeks. The first three weeks are online coursework to prepare you to make the most of the in-person classes. The remaining 17 weeks of in-person classes are held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 6pm – 9pm and every other Saturday from 9am to 5pm.

Upcoming Cohorts

March 5th, 2018 – July 21st, 2018

Questions

The UX design course is a part-time yet immersive UX bootcamp. The class schedule is nights and weekends, so you can keep your day job. The course is designed to prepare students to apply what they’ve learned to crafting real-world UX solutions. Below is a chronological breakdown of the course work.

Section 1: Level Up Your Skills

In the first two weeks, you’ll ease into the class’s collaborative style while working remotely on our online coursework getting you comfortable with basics, and with programs such as Invision and Sketch. You’ll then learn how to apply these in practical settings throughout the course when choosing a project and structuring a plan.

Section 2: Human Factors & Design Thinking

After arriving at our inviting campus, you’ll dive into a dark place: the human mind. Our instructors will go through human psychology concepts, and teach you how to create human-centered designs and experiences to tip the behavioral economics scale in your favor. You’ll also learn and practice design thinking, a thought process to be practiced throughout the course.

Section 3: In the Weeds of Research & Concept Development

The body of the bootcamp will cover not only research theory, but live research practice with deliverable content for a local client, as well. You’ll cover how to organize your primary research, concept validation, data analysis, identifying personas, creating storyboards, and information architecture for presentation.

Section 4: Design Implementation – Some Assembly Required

Now that you’ve assembled your research and findings, it’s time to put it into action. You’ll gain an understanding of wireframing and how to design effective User Interface (UI). After presenting your assembled product plan, you’ll build a prototype and conduct proper usability testing.

Section 5: Building a Portfolio & Career Prep

You’ll be receiving top-notch feedback while building your professional portfolio so you can market yourself in the UX job world. Together, we’ll spend time exploring the different roles of UX within organizations, and how UX professionals fit into different types of project teams. No one operates in a vacuum, it takes exemplary communication skills to get things done in UX design, so you’ll learn how to fit into an organization from those who have been there. You’ll also get connected in our employer network and benefit from local UX/UI panels and our Demo Day.

Section 1: Level Up Your Skills

The first three weeks of this course are an online (remote coursework) introduction to design essentials and walkthroughs of the software programs we will be utilizing in this course. Using Sketch we will understand how to create basic layouts and design elements that will become fully designed interfaces. With InVision we will link these screens together to create our interactive prototypes. You’ll also be introduced to Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Section 3: In the Weeds of Research & Concept Development

The body of the bootcamp will cover not only research theory, but live research practice with deliverable content for a local client, as well. You’ll cover how to organize your primary research, concept validation, data analysis, identifying personas, creating storyboards, and information architecture for presentation.

Section 5: Building a Portfolio & Career Prep

You’ll be receiving top-notch feedback while building your professional portfolio so you can market yourself in the UX job world. Together, we’ll spend time exploring the different roles of UX within organizations, and how UX professionals fit into different types of project teams. No one operates in a vacuum, it takes exemplary communication skills to get things done in UX design, so you’ll learn how to fit into an organization from those who have been there. You’ll also get connected in our employer network and benefit from local UX/UI panels and our Demo Day.

Challenge your status quo.

Find out if you’re the right fit, and take the first step toward the next stage of your career.